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Thunderbird Environmental

The Team: https://vimeo.com/377229583 The Job: https://vimeo.com/377229599 The Home: https://vimeo.com/377229613

American Red Cross Videos

Donating: https://vimeo.com/377216047

Volunteering: https://vimeo.com/377216050

Installation: https://vimeo.com/377216083

American Red Cross Final Videos

Financials and Donations: https://vimeo.com/377162062

Volunteering: https://vimeo.com/377162479

Smoke Detector Installation: https://vimeo.com/377214155

https://youtu.be/H-YNMRmIxTU

https://youtu.be/uJxoQPnLe7U

https://youtu.be/CMVpOZmGOpQ

Champlain Boxing Club Series

I asked one of the founder’s of the school’s boxing program if they’d be interested in me making some promotional videos for the club and used this as the topic for my final project. The goal was to get the word out that there is a boxing club on campus as they haven’t done a whole lot of promotion yet and many people still don’t know it exists.

Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbJQccX0RMw

Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4EvRzUYnXo

Video 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMJqVD-mH3Y

Graduation Series

Michael Safee and I sat down with various seniors to get their memories and thoughts of their time here at Champlain College before they graduate. We also sat down with some faculty who expressed their congrats and connections to their students check out the series here:

https://youtu.be/Wr-xWqL9Fks

https://youtu.be/F9VQB7DPJsg

https://youtu.be/PEm5fKKxlF4

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Video Series

https://youtu.be/Wr-xWqL9Fks

https://youtu.be/F9VQB7DPJsg

https://youtu.be/PEm5fKKxlF4

chasingmro-blog

The Environment and Veganism: Sarah Cain

Take a second and think about the first thing that comes to mind when you hear about veganism. Do you think about the overly outspoken people who try to convert you with fire and brimstone? Maybe you think of the people who can’t stand to see any sort of animal killed? Maybe you know someone that you associate with the idea of being vegan and your opinion on veganism is shaped by them?

For me, it has recently become the latter. I’ve never really put much thought into what I ate or cared too much about what vegans had to say, but this year I met a girl named Sarah Cain, an environmental science major at UVM. She doesn’t really fit the typical stereotype that people associate with veganism. She isn’t overly outspoken or actively trying to get you to convert. She doesn’t cry every time an animal is killed. Instead, she keeps to herself and holds steadfast to her love of nature. For her, veganism is another way of being environmentally conscious, just like using reusable bags or recycling. As she puts it, it’s another small thing that she can do to play her part in helping to save the environment against climate change.

So Sarah has become the person that I have associated veganism with, and she’s led me to begin a journey of learning the intricacies of what is and isn’t made with animal products. I tend to find myself checking menus for animal products when I go to restaurants, even when she isn’t there with me. Her overwhelming passion for the environment and the lengths she takes to stick to that belief has begun to rub off on me, and it has opened my eyes in a way that I hadn’t before. Instead of passively watching the world implode and saying “Welp there was nothing I could do. I’m just one person.”, I feel a need to contribute in my own sort of way. It might not be by going completely vegan, but Sarah has shown that anything and everything that you can do to make the world a better place is something that’s worth doing.

Ben Burt has been one of my best friends since middle school. We grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same high school, and both ended up in Burlington for college. This year, Ben and I live together with two others as well. When I was assigned this piece, I gave it a few days of thought before deciding that my roommate could make for a good subject.

Ben grew up in Texas. His dad taught at the University of Texas, and that was where he had his first experiences with music. It was never the biggest thing in Ben’s life however. Even in middle school, I remember a few occasions convincing Ben to skip band practice to go out skating with me. But once we reached high school, Ben had really found music, and it was clear that it was a driving force in his life. His dad is one of the most respected classical trumpet plaeyrs in the world, so Ben definitely had a leg up. Just being exposed to that much music his whole life, he was able to channel certain sounds and ideas better than kids who did not have the exposure that he had. On top of that, breathing techniques are incredibly important in playing the trumpet, and his dad can help him a lot.

While Ben still plays the trumpet daily, he has moved on to other areas of music as well. Recently he’s been working with a program called Ableton, producing music for singers and rappers. The music he makes can be most easily categorized into the Hip Hop or R&B genre, Ben has said his early education on reading, writing, and music theory has helped with his current production. In the future, Ben hopes to work as a technician in a studio mixing or mastering, while continuing to make his own music. It has been really cool watching Ben progress as a musician. In recent months particularly, he has started to become more recognized by artists that we listen to and in the works on collaborating with mutliple different artists our friend group has been listening to for quite some time. Ben now has the power and ability to create the kind of music we have been listening to.

White in South Africa

My culture and identity piece focuses on a student and friend of mine named Benjamin Sacke. I first met Ben through a friend who is serving as a Resident Adviser in McDonald Hall at Champlain College. Ben was a freshman at McDonald Hall and I would often see him during my many visits. We eventually became acquainted and I was fairly surprised when I learned that he was from South Africa. When I heard this, I had to know more.

Ben and I got talking and eventually started hanging out on occasion. I found Ben to be a good person to talk to about real world issues and politics as he is patient and has a fair bit of knowledge about global topics. I once asked Ben about some things I had heard pertaining to South Africa but couldn’t assume to be true with what little I knew at the time. He informed me that the things I heard were in fact true and that he experienced some of the things I spoke of first hand. South Africa is indeed a highly segregated environment currently as black South Africans push against white South Africans in rural areas. With so much racial tension in a place mostly populated by people of darker skin tones, someone with light skin like Ben must have some level of understanding of what it’s like to face prejudice.

I knew I wanted to work with somebody of a unique cultural significance at some point in one of my pieces but it was just a matter of finding that right person. I’m glad to have become friends with Ben and I believe he is exactly the man I’ve been looking for. I got a real sense of what’s important to him and how his life experiences have molded him and made him who he is today. Through both my interview and time talking with Ben about what some may consider a sensitive topic, I have come to appreciate those who stand up for their place within the societies that created them and I would never have been able to imagine how hard that might be for some people without having had this interaction.

VIDEO LINK: https://vimeo.com/371346877

Music and Identity

When I was a kid, my friends often poked at me for not really listening to music. However that quickly changed. I developed a fascination with music, inevitably leading to an interest in making it. I think I first started making music when I was around 12. I was adamant that I wanted to play the drums. But after unsuccessfully putting me through piano lessons, my parents were questioning my dedication to music. I don’t entirely blame because after playing drums for three years, I discovered music production and I abandoned drums and piano (for a while) in favor of this art form that offered more sonic capability than drums could even come close to.

When it comes to learning, for most of my “career”, I consider myself to have been an autodidact. I didn’t have a formal music teacher for most of the 7 years I have been producing music. To a great extent, a lack of a teacher is what kept me curious. Every musician has an opinion about how to teach music, but I always thought it was dangerous to study music, and that the people who learn to make music by doing it, make more interesting music. If you know too much about music, the mystery is gone.

It’s one of the reasons I think everyone should play music in someway. Because you really don’t need a formal training to be a great musician. Not to say that music should never be studied. In order to make truly important music, you need some understanding of music theory. You need to know what rules to break.

At the end of the day, music is like a language that doesn’t use words, but emotions. As is the case with any language, it doesn’t matter how many words and phrases you know, but rather the emotional context you put them in.

Most people listen to music as an indirect form of expression. It’s easy to project your emotions onto music because typically, emotions are heavily involved in the process of making it. However for the person creating it, emotions play a different role than a listener. It is a kind of therapy where you can work on something that reminds you of the mood you were in when you thought of it. It reminds you that you have been through something.

I talked to my roommate Paul about his music history and why he makes music. It seems that the bottom line for him was investing in his own imagination, which is a sentiment that should drive all musicians.

Voice

Having a dream is pretty universal. Like a dream job, a dream house, or even something that’s so ideal, it at first might seem impossible. My dream began when I was about thirteen and I woke up with my deeper voice. Before then it was much higher. I had always looked up to the people who voiced the characters on the shows I watched, especially in anime. I always understood that you could write a story that could be the most interesting thing in the world, but in the end it’s still just something written down. Some people just don’t like to read, like some of my friends when I was younger, the ones that showed me what Anime was. This medium gave me motivation as someone who had dreams of voice acting; I could be the protagonist!

I researched who voiced some of my favorite characters and followed what they worked on, and the actors in movies who did voice acting. One specific actor that I was always amazed by was Alan Tudyk, who played Wash in the show Firefly, the space-cowboy television show infamous for only lasting a couple seasons. This show was something my whole family could sit down at dinner and watch on the box set I got for Christmas one year. I, Robot was a movie that was played almost as much as the Firefly box set. My brother and I would watch it every time we went on a road trip, and I remember when it fell out of the case, got scratched and how upset I was. It turns out young-me couldn’t escape Tudyk, as he was the voice of the titular robot, Sunny. This voice acting role attached to this actor I idolized only made me appreciate his work even more, and strive to be like him.

Tudyk was not the only one to influence my interests and future career, as Matthew Mercer became a more realized presence when I got interested in Dungeons and Dragons. This voice actor, known for his role as Dungeon Master on the popular podcast, Critical Role, led me to host sessions of the role-playing game on my own for friends. Mercer is famous in the D&D world as a devoted Dungeon Master, or DM. His role as DM is to construct a narrative and build a world for the players to explore and inhabit. As such, he assumes the role of every human, elf, dwarf, or whatever other sentient creature the players encounter, all of which are voice actors on the show. He uses a plethora of accents and modifications to make the players and viewers engaged in what he has to say, all of which I tried to replicate. At the moment, I run a session every Thursday night remotely with my friends, all who take time from their busy schedule to play this game. I even record, edit, and save the episodes for safekeeping, secretly hoping that one day I can publish them somewhere.

I consider myself incredibly lucky to have the genetic makeup that I do, as if I didn’t have the voice depth or range, I would not feel as motivated to pursue the same field as I am now. In truth, the way I see myself is reliant on how I sound to myself. Sitting down and being interviewed let me see what I’ve gotten done and what I want to do with my life.

Watch the interview here: https://vimeo.com/370766267

Culture and Identity assignment

To my knowledge, I have never met an Albanian before last year when I met my current boyfriend, Desti. He grew up in Albania and did not move to the United States until he was already 12 years old. Albania is not much of a hot topic in America, most people do not even know where it is. After some trips to Google maps Desti helped me understand where Albania lies in respect to more well known countries like its neighbor, Greece. Albania is in a southeast region of Europe called the Balkan Peninsula, which includes Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, and the European part of Turkey.

Much of the history in the Balkans involves wars and other controversies between countries. The history of the Balkans heightened the importance of ethnicity and has led to how people identify themselves in that region. In America someone might say “my white friend, my black friend, my gay friend” but in the Balkans one would more likely hear, “my Albanian friend, my Slavic friend, my Turkish friend”.

The identifiers we use are not only defined by society, but also by the history of that society. Race has had one of the most deep-seated histories in the United States. It is still at the heart of many of today’s “hot topics” in the news. It was really interesting to hear about a whole region of countries where race did not define someone. Part of this is due to a lack of racial diversity in the Balkans; but even those who visit areas with more racial diversity, are not likely to use it as an identifier. It seems like ethnicity is to the Balkans, as race is to America; which makes me wonder if ethnicity currently leads to conflict in the Balkans, as race still does in the United States. In the video, Desti shares his personal experience; he was born in Macedonia but is ethnically Albanian. In Albania, he would take it as a personal offense when someone called him Slavic, or anything other than Albanian. His description of the situation seems to demonstrate that ethnicity is still a head-butting topic in the Balkans. His fear of rejection and embarrassment from being born outside of Albania showcases how large a role ethnicity plays in one's identity in his homeland. Despite the pride of being an ethnic Albanian, there is a common interest regarding a country idolized above Albania: the United States of America. “The way we define success is making it out. There’s no success in staying in our country...going to America is the top of the list,” Desti shared when describing Albanians’ perception of the U.S. Ethnicity rules over identity in the Balkans, but once one gets out, that aspect of identity shifts. Check out this video to hear more of Desti’s first hand experience with ethnicity and identity in the Balkans.

Skating Culture

By Sydney Morong and Connor Greene

After choosing Burlington as my home for the next four years, I noticed right away how big the skating culture is. A bunch of my friends are immersed in the skating culture, and constantly bring me to the skate park. Even for someone who doesn’t skate, I enjoy watching how impressive skateboarding is.

I am always so intrigued by how a shitty, wooden board can mean so much to so many people. But it’s so much more than cool skate tricks.

Skateboarding is a culture. And I decided to focus my video on what that culture means to a few of my friends.

Wyatt Ruttle and Patrick Ziemke are two friends who literally NEVER shut up about how passionate they are about skating, and that’s why I’ve chosen them to be the focus of the video.

Patrick began skating when he was 10 years old at a summer camp. Ever since then, he fell in love with the sport. To him, skating is not only a more efficient way of getting around, but it’s a good social outlet. He feels that people in the skating community are very positive and supporting, and he never has to worry about feeling judged.

Wyatt only began skating last year, and has continued to grow as a skater ever since. He talks to me about being a part of this culture and how to him it means freedom of expression.

We talked about all of this when they were skating around in Finney Quad. Patrick was working on perfecting his ollie (a skateboarding trick), while Wyatt kept attempting the rail.

I noticed a scar on Wyatt’s arm, and when I pointed it out, he mentioned that falling was a huge part of the sport. “You just gotta keep going. You fall and get back up and just try again until you perfect it.”

The boys went on about how when you attempt to learn a new trick, you’ll fail for a long time until one day when you master it. It took over 2 months for Pat to learn how to do a kickflip, which to me seems like a simple trick.

After spending a few hours filming the boys skate around and being immersed in even just a small group of the skating community, I felt accepted- even for someone who doesn’t skate. This video captures what being apart of this culture really means.

Here’s the link: vimeo.com/371039325

The Walk of Your Neighbors

Many people have heard the term autoimmune disease, but what exactly does that mean? Basically, it's a condition where your body's immune system attacks itself. Your body is typically able to fight off germs and other infections by attacking those foreign cells. If you have an autoimmune disease however, your immune system may not be able to tell the difference between some body parts and foreign cells. Often times, the joints or skin will be attacked. There are many different types of autoimmune diseases, some worse than others, but all are harmful and potentially life changing. The accepted theory of these diseases is that they are passed down through genes. Common side effects tend to be things like fatigue, achy muscles, swelling, numbness in hands or feet, skin rashes, and hair loss among others. There are more than 80 types of autoimmune disease and there are no cures. The only treatments that can be done are medications to ease things like pain and inflammation.

The autoimmune disease I have is called Ankylosing Spondylitis, or (AS) for short. AS is a particular type of arthritis that targets the spinal region, although it can also affect other joints. My first experience with AS was in middle school, specifically in eighth grade. It was my second year on the tennis team when I first felt the debilitating pain of AS. One day during practice, I started feeling a sharp pain in my racket hand every time I returned the tennis ball. I ignored it at first, but by the next day of practice, every swing would send horribly sharp pains from between my knuckles down to just past my wrist. It was a deep pain, one that would soon lead me to start slamming the back of my hand against walls and tables to cause a different pain to drown out what I was already feeling. I realized it was no longer sustainable to play and so I quit the tennis team. The hopes that the pains were from the sports soon faded away and the daily pain in other joints started intensifying. My parents ended up taking me to a rheumatologist, and he was able to identify the disease. The worst part was I was still too young to be treated. There were apparently some sort of regulations in place that forced the doctors to wait until a patient was 16 before I would be properly diagnosed and treated. That meant for the next couple years, I was forced to deal with chronic pain that, more than anything, plagued my hands and watch as the disease spread and got worse. Now, to be fair, at that point, I only cared about the pain.

So for two years I learned what it was like to live as an old person with arthritis, at least that's the joke I used to always say. It was very difficult learning to live this way. I am at a point in my life where I no longer remember what it feels like to go a day without having any pain. And it's not like a sore knee because you fell crossing the street or an achy back because you slept on it a little wrong. It’s more like, you turn your head around to see who called your name, and a fast bolt of pain shoots down your neck to your back. It’s painfully simple tasks that can cause an alarming amount of pain for no apparent reason. Writing is one of the worst inducers of pain. Anything more than maybe ten minutes of note-taking starts the aching. You better believe on-demand essays in high school were absolutely dreadful. But guess what, since I couldn’t get diagnosed, I was unable to get any special resources or help.

The hardest part was getting through it mentally. I used to get angry and almost punish myself for being weak. It was hard to watch people around me in their more normal bodies with better health. For many years, I ended up being depressed because of it. What was worse, was the fact that I can’t physically handle as much as a healthy person, and people would call me out. “Devin, how come you can’t do this?.....Why don’t you play sports? .....I don’t understand, why are you hurting, we haven’t done that much?”. The questions were horrible to my confidence. The reality is, no matter how much you try to explain to a healthy person, the difficulties of living with an autoimmune disease, they will not be able to fully understand, as much as they may want to.

I took part in a short interview to try and explain the broad difficulties of living with an auto-immune disease, check it out: https://youtu.be/DhtrHAzP9H4

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Skateboarding Culture - Champlain College Edition

Skateboarding is a unique sport in that it has influenced areas of life not exclusively associated with the activity, such as fashion, music, and even the way we talk. Think of terms such as sick (as in cool), stoked, and sketchy, all which have origins in skateboarding culture. This ties in with the most important part of skateboarder identity, independence. As a boarder, you are free to skate however you like and learn the tricks you want; there are very few rules holding you back. As a non competitive skier, I can relate to this attitude as there is only one rule I must follow, getting to the bottom of the hill. Aside from that one guiding principle, I have free reign over how I approach the slope, whether it be taking a straight path to my destination, diverging onto one of the side trails, or trying my hand at jumping some of the natural features that obstruct my route. In this way, skateboarding culture draws individuals with creative minds, providing a space where they can develop new tricks and push the boundaries of what skating has to offer.

Skateboarding started off as a sport held with contempt by many due to its association with reckless and lazy behavior. But over the decades these prejudices quickly fell to the wayside as people like Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen brought skateboarding into the mainstream. Companies quickly learned that signing sponsorship contracts with these rising stars, like they did with other famous athletes, would increase their profits, something which played a major role in the shift of perceptions. Younger generations might not know skating used to be a naughty word you didn’t want to be associated with, because growing up, we’ve played video games and watched media that told us - skating is pretty cool, you should try it. With this gradual acceptance and redefinition of what skating represents, the idea that a positive identity could be formed around it began to take shape.

Returning to the sport’s origins in 1958, it’s hard to imagine skateboarding was once a niche activity that saw skaters making their own boards out of whatever materials they could scavenge. Today, skateboarding culture has many subgroups, each using this overarching identity as a medium to better express themselves. For example, the movie, Skate Kitchen, directed by Crystal Morselle, tells the story of a group of teenage girls in New York City who “find a sense of self and solidarity in skating.” All this goes to show that today’s skaters stand in stark contrast to their earlier counterparts, not only in the quality of the equipment available to them, but also in the way that they see skateboarding as an extension of their personality, rather than just another recreational activity.

Here’s a link to a video showcasing the skateboarding community at Champlain College: https://vimeo.com/371204786

Lily’s Style

When you think of clothes, are you thinking about the fabrics, colors or even the design? Fashion is not only a look, it’s a lifestyle to many. The outfits we wear say something about our personalities without any words needed. They help introduce our passions, hobbies, and our interests to the rest of the world as well.

When I assess my own fashion, I can without a doubt say I’m rocking a northeastern, Vermont style. A pair of jeans, a blank grey shirt or T-shirt and a flannel shirt on top represents the laid back and comfortable feeling you can find all around the region. I think it shows my fellow Champlain College friends that I’m a native, and I enjoy everything the state has to offer, including the cold. While my fashion may not tell you everything about my personality and aspirations, it does give others at least a glimpse at some of the traditions and lifestyle I’ve been a custom to all my life.

Lily Marino had her unique story as well. Her fashion is something that she described as unique. Her style is older and more vintage than something you might see trending around the country today. Lily chooses to express her love for the 90’s through some of her mom’s old clothing. She not only is expressing her love for things , but Lily also will gladly tell you that she expresses her emotions through her clothing as well. She will also tell you that the weather impacts both her emotions, and therefore, her outfit. While Lily may not be expressing that Vermont culture like me, she definitely takes advantage of the fact that her style is well represented in Burlington.

While each person has their own take on fashion. Lily’s story on her own can be an inspiration for others who are trying to express their love for something. While producing this video on ‘Lily’s Style’ I also began to think deeper about my own look, and how others might benefit the same way.

Check out Lily’s story and fashion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYT2328Vje4&feature=youtu.be

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